Minnesota Has Lost Another 300 Farms

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota has slightly fewer farms than a year ago but the ones that remain tend to be getting larger, following national trends.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture report released Friday says the total number of farms in Minnesota in 2016 was 73,300. That's down 300 from 2015.

The total amount of Minnesota farmland last year was 25.9 million acres, which hasn't changed since 2013.

But the acreage of farms with sales of $100,000 to $1 million increased by 100,000 acres from 2015. The number of farms with sales of $100,000 to $250,000 increased by 100 to 8,600.

The average farm size in Minnesota in 2016 was 353 acres, up one acre from 2015.

Nationally, the USDA estimates number of farms for 2016 at 2.06 million, down 8,000 farms from 2015.